Norm Pence is a Staff Software Engineer for Lockheed
Martin Astronautics, Space Exploration Systems.
He was born in Hugo, Oklahoma, in 1943 and received
a B.S. Degree in Mathematics from the University
of Oklahoma in 1966.

He has been an employee of Lockheed Martin Astronautics
since August 1980. For the first 13 years of his
career at LMA, he worked software development,
test and launch support for a series of Titan
launch vehicles including Titan II, Titan III,
Titan IV and Commerical Titan.

In July 1994, he transferred to the Space Exploration
Systems part of the company to begin work on the
Mars Global Surveyor project as a flight software
development and test engineer. In September 1996,
he joined the MGS Flight Operations team as the
Flight Software lead. After MGS reached its mapping
orbit, he then, in parallel with his MGS duties,
began software acceptance testing for the Mars
Odyssey and Genesis programs including launch
support.

He is currently providing flight software operations
support for the MGS, Stardust, Mars Odyssey and
Genesis spacecraft.